Archives for May 17, 2017

Wednesday’s ad is for Ballantine, from 1948. In this ad, part of a series progressing from one, to two, to three rings, this one shows a sled pulled through the snow by a white horse. It’s obviously Christmastime and the couple appears to be delivering Ballantine, but it seems to be that each house they visit adds one more smoke ring from their chimney so that by the third home it’s the Ballantine logo in fireplace smoke rings.

Today would have been Bert Grant’s 89th birthday, and he is still definitely missed. Bert opened the country’s first brewpub in 1982 in Yakima, Washington and was a fixture in the industry until his death in late July of 2001. Join me tonight in lifting a pint to Bert’s memory.

Craft brewing pioneer Bert Grant, who founded the first modern day brewpub in the United States, is dead at 73.

Grant had been ill for two years and died Tuesday at the University of British Columbia Hospital in Vancouver. He had moved to that city a year ago to be close to his children.

When Grant founded his brewpub in Yakima, Wash., in 1982 there were fewer than 50 individual brewing operations in the U.S. Today there are more than 1,500. That brewpub expanded to become a bottling microbrewery, selling about 10,000 barrels of Bert Grant’s Ales in 2001. He sold the brewery to Chateau Ste. Michelle wines in 1995, but Grant remained an active spokesman until being slowed by illness.

He’d sometimes wear a kilt at his pub in Yakima and occasionally dance on the bar. He kept a claymore — a double-bladed broadsword — just in case he had to enforce his ban on smoking.

He was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1928. He moved to Toronto, where he grew up and got his first job in a brewery … at 16, he became a beer taster. He remained in the beer business all his life. He moved to Yakima in 1967, where he helped build and operate two plants that processed hops. His patented processing of hops is still in use today.

Bert Grant Bert was one of a kind,” said Paul Shipman, who founded Red Hook Brewery around the time Grant began Yakima Brewing and Malting Co. “He was a scientist, a brewer, and I don’t think he even graduated high school.”

He remained dedicated to assertive beer and carried a vial of hop oil in his pocket to boost the flavor of a bland domestic beer. His first priority was to brew beer he liked. “It may not be your favorite beer,” Grant’s son Peter said. “But it was his.”